The Regulation of Ant Colony Foraging Activity without Spatial Information

Figure 3

Correlation of rates of outgoing and returning foragers as a function of level of foraging activity.

Each point shows, for one trial, the coefficient of correlation between the smoothed rates of returning and outgoing foragers. The x-axis shows the mean rate of returning foragers over the entire trial. Blue diamonds show the coefficients of correlation between observed rates of returning foragers and simulated rates of outgoing foragers. Red squares show the coefficients of correlation between observed rates of returning foragers and observed rates of outgoing foragers. The upper line shows the least-squares fit to the increase with foraging activity of the correlation between observed returning and simulated outgoing foraging rates points (blue); the lower line shows the least-squares fit to the increase with foraging activity of the correlation between observed returning and observed outgoing foraging rates(red).